Book Description
From the internationally acclaimed Australian writer: a single volume gathering a brilliant new collection of his short fiction, Every Move You Make, and all of his previously published stories.

In the heretofore unpublished Every Move You Make: bookish boys and taciturn men, strong women and wayward sons, fathers and daughters, lovers and husbands, a composer and his muse, a builder-architect and his legacy--here are their stories, whole lives brought dramatically into focus and powerfully rooted in the vividly rendered landscape of the vast Australian continent, from the mysterious, glittering Valley of Lagoons inFar North Queensland to bohemian Sydney to Ayres Rock in the Great Victoria Desert. These tender, subtle, and intimate stories give us men and women looking for something they seem to have missed, or missed out on, puzzling over not only their own lives but also the place they have come to occupy in the lives of others.

Heartbreakingly beautiful, richly satisfying, The Complete Stories also includes David Malouf’s short fiction from Dream Stuff, Antipodes, and Child’s Play. It is a major literary event. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

So moving only read one at a time
Malouf's stories are so quietly intense you can be breathless at any ending.Savor each with a long pause in between.I used the library but need my own copy! ... Read more

Book Description
In the first century A.D., Publius Ovidius Naso, the most urbane and irreverent poet of imperial Rome, was banished to a remote village on the edge of the Black Sea. From these sparse facts, Malouf has fashioned an audacious and supremely moving novel. Marooned on the edge of the known world, exiled from his native tongue, Ovid depends on the kindness of barbarians who impale their dead and converse with the spirit world.Then he becomes the guardian of a still more savage creature, a feral child who has grown up among deer. What ensues is a luminous encounter between civilization and nature, as enacted by a poet who once cataloged the treacheries of love and a boy who slowly learns how to give it.

"A work of unusual intelligence and imagination, full of surprising images and insights...One of those rare books you end up underlining and copying out into notebooks and reading out loud to friends."--The New York Times Book Review ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

A literary classic - really!
This is a remarkable book - about what it means to be human - and how we would live our life if we could invent it from scratch with no reference to our culture and family.Malouf writes with a poetic beauty that is enthralling. I have been unable to read any more of his books in case they were not as magical as this one!
Yes it is true he is a fellow Australian, but his ancestry is from Lebanon I think, and the book is set in the ancient Roman empire, so my bias might be taken as minor.

"Brilliant short novel about civilization"
A brilliant short novel about civilization and it's relative disadvantages. It is ostensibly about the poet Ovid's exile from Rome in the fist century A.D. and his developing relationship weather feral child on the outskirts of the empire: Civilization vs. Nature. The importance of language in the novel is questioned, makes a good departure for a book group that will discuss the impact of words. We used Malouf's flowing novel to launch our book club, and the discussion touched on various topics such as Ovid, religion, Roman history.

Amazing
This is an extraordinary, fascinating, and deeply moving book.Malouf brilliantly takes Ovid's exile to the furthest outpost of the Roman empire and makes of it a beautifully written, beautifully executed meditation on imagination and "what it is to be human."It is a strangely liberating book, for, to quote the text, "We are free to transcend ourselves.If we have the imagination for it."

Fully Human!
Excellent tale, seeking to define qualities that make one human.Social graces, intelligence, superstition, one with nature.And who better to question the concept but an outstanding poet, whom we know of two millenia after his death.Who was fully human, the boy or the poet, or the villagers?Give me the poet any day.

What Might Have Been
"An Imaginary Life" is one of the most mesmerizing books I've ever read and it's certainly the most poetic and beautiful.There isn't much of a plot in this book nor is it a character study.To me, it's more akin to a long prose poem (and Malouf is also a poet as well as a novelist), though it really isn't a prose poem, either."An Imaginary Life" is a poetic flight of fancy, an impossibly beautiful reverie and a dazzling story of "what might have been yet could never be."

Most of the events this book relates are, of course, imagined.We know that Ovid was exiled and we know to where, but about what happened during that exile, we know nothing, not even the date or exact place of Ovid's death.

Malouf has used this absence of known facts regrding Ovid's exile to weave a gorgeously ephemeral portrait of a man and a boy who, together, find the wellspring of both humanity and love, something neither could have done alone, despite Ovid's reputation in Rome.

While the storyline of "An Imaginary Life" isn't particularly mesmerizing on its own, Malouf's lush, poetic prose makes it so.This is a short book, really more of a novella than a novel and I can't imagine anyone not reading it in one sitting.One sentence simply flows into the next and I was riveted from the first page to the last.

Highly recommended to anyone. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

An indelible impression
I read this bbok while in my early twenties and naive to so many of the horrors of war. It had a profound impact on me. Ten years later, after spending the first two years of her life in India, my daughter was gravely ill. My recollections of this book and the Cholera symptoms that Malouf described in his characters... prompted me to confront the Dr's with my fear. I was correct, she had Cholera. The vivid descriptions of what those men must have suffered during those times had never left me, and Malouf's clarity and attention to detail in his writing saved my daughters life. A life changing read for me!

Great story and great storytelling
David Malouf is a masterful storyteller. His multiple award winning novel, "The Great World",is a coming-of-age tale of lost innocence of two lads (Digger and Vic) whose separate childhoods in the outbacks of Australia and their shared experiences as interns in the Second World War helped shape the course of their future together. It's difficult to characterise the relationship these two men have with each other. To call it friendship would be to simultaneously overstate and understate the position. They were never really buddies - hell, Digger didn't even like Vic - but fate had different ideas and kept intervening at critical moments to draw them together whenever their lives took separate turns after the war. Of the two, Vic is the more colourful and vividly drawn character.The early rejection of his natural father - a weak and sorry piece of low life - and his obsessive need for self determination provide more than a clue to our impression of him as a steely hearted "user" (of Digger, his adoptive family, etc) of family and friends for his own ends. The sad irony is that Vic is as much a victim as the people he uses and only his wife, Ellie, is privileged and burdened by knowledge of the truth when she catches a glimpse of his real self in the dark. More disappointment follows when his son Greg turns out to be a sloganeering liberal. Digger, on the other hand, is arguably the novel's moral centre but as a character, he seems curiously underwritten. His part is that of the moon to Vic's sun. He possesses a vulnerability that is simply incandescent. Even Jenny, his retarded sister, sees through Vic, but Digger remains trusting and accepting to the end. But "The Great World" is far from a two man show. There are loads more characters that Malouf creates who are truly memorable. Mac, their war time mate, may have been given limited script space, but his spirit lives on long after he has been written out.It's also a wonderfully uplifting moment for the reader whenPa and Ma, Vic's adoptive parents, find their true vocation in life as poet and businesswoman, respectively. Malouf is a classic writer in the best of the old fashioned tradition. He knows how to tell a story and keep you enthralled from start to finish. His prose is warm, accessible and true. Reading "The Great World" may not change your life but it will show you what it is to be human. A great novel. I highly recommend it.

Takes His Time
Mr. Malouf is a gifted communicator, creator, and conjuror. I am even tempted to use literary alchemist for he does not just take words and arrange them, he selects words, assembles them with care and thought, and truly creates writing that is altogether new. This holds true whether he is dealing in pure fiction, or fiction that is historically based. The books that result from his efforts are almost uniformly excellent, and at there best incorporate the various types of writing he has such a wonderful grasp of. For Mr. Malouf is a Novelist, a Poet, and a Librettist, each an accomplishment, when combined extraordinary.

I have one of his novels left to read, and having come this far into his work I recommend them all without condition. "The Great World", is different from the previous works I have read and commented upon, and this is due primarily to its length. I once read that a movie is an epic if it takes its time. If that is the criterion here, then this work certainly qualifies. If you have read any of his shorter works, and have been amazed with the scope he can cover, the illusion of time and length he conveys, imagine it tripled or quadrupled, and you will get an idea of the panorama of lifetimes this work relates.

To narrow the comments on this work to an observation or two is unfair. There are just so much and so many players that are important. However to focus on Vic and Digger and the lifetime's experiences they share, takes a good deal of the book into account. Vic is at once an enigma and a cliché. This is a man who will continue to removes cookies after being caught in the act, and then risk his life to save that of the friend whose jar he had plundered. He is an exploiter of human friendship a businessman of questionable ethics he is faithful, faithless. He is a montage of all that is meant to be human. Superficially he is in control, beneath the veneer, he is simply human wreckage.

Digger is the friend you would like to have, a man that Vic feels he justifiably targets and exploits, but I never felt that Digger was the person who was deluding himself. Even "simple" Jenny always knew what Vic was. Vic was accommodated by Digger when others who would meet him instantly were put off. He was his silent apologist, his passive defender, not because he believed Vic to be good, merely in need of pity.

There are many events in the book that are important, but one is critical. It is one of those moments when a person finds out what they are or are not capable of. As a solitary experience it can be painful, when it involves another it can be shattering. Vic has this experience while a POW with Digger and others, and it governs his life forever. His time as a POW finalizes who Vic is, while others integrate it as an episode of their life.

Mr. Malouf has written a remarkable study of men in captivity, men who spend the majority of the War as prisoners without the opportunity to prove themselves, defend their Country, or earn the right to say, "I was there". This study of human nature alone makes the book worthwhile, but as I mentioned it is one of many human explorations Mr. Malouf takes the reader upon.

For anyone who enjoys excellent writing, Mr. Malouf will greatly enhance your reading experiences, even with topics you might not normally tend to choose. He is certainly an Author who will never disappoint you.

Beautifully written, poignant novel
Malouf is a master storyteller! He writes vivid, sensual, evocative novels, and this is one of his best. Very cinematic and emotional. I've loaned my copy of this book to several people who've never read Malouf before, and they each loved it and were deeply affected by the subject matter.

Excellent Imagery of the Australian "Digger"
Just finished this book, and found it slow going but had a fantastic sense of imagery. The characters are very fully developed .. one really gets to know them before they are taken away one by one. ... Read more

Book Description
Winner of the IMPAC Award and Booker Prize nominee

In this rich and compelling novel, written in language of astonishing poise and resonance, one of Australia's greatest living writers gives and immensely powerful vision of human differences and eternal divisions.  In the mid-1840s a thirteen-year-old British cabin boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by aborigines. Sixteen years later he moves back into the world of Europeans, among hopeful yet terrified settlers who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place. To them, Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge: he is a force that at once fascinates and repels. His own identity in this new world is as unsettling to him as the knowledge he brings to others of the savage, the aboriginal.



"Breathtaking...To read this remarkable book is to remember Babylon well, whether you think you've been there or not."
--The New York Times Book Review ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Remembering Babylon
I read this for a class on British Lit Post-WWII. It's one of those books that I know I wouldn't have picked up off a shelf on my own, but I enjoyed it. Malouf uses a lot of imagery to convey the emotions in both characters and the community as they cope in their own ways with Gemmy. A very interesting story about a white man who is lost overboard a ship as a child, and raised by the aborigines until he comes upon a settlement of whites. Definitely an intriguing look at race (he is known among the settlers as the "black-white man"), community, and identity.

Exile
Lachlan Beattie, a boy of Queensland, encounters Gemmy Fairley, a ragged castaway.Gemmy had learned the speech of the Aborigines and he had lived among them.He was not quite a Kaspar Hauser, but nearly one.He was taken in by Jock and Ellen McIvor, Lachlan's aunt and uncle.Gemmy had jerking stammering fits.People wondered if he was a spy.He was white but had acquired a native look.

George Abbot, the schoolmaster of the settlement, is very young, but likes to pretend that he is older.Abbot hates the petty tyrannies of his job, hitting the students with a ruler.He had been a charming child, but as an adult he was plain.Alisdair Robertson, a relative, had helped George as a child.He was the person who had urged George to go teach at the settlement.George felt that he had come to a not very promising end.Gemmy tagged after the children when they went to school.George Abbot was the sort of person who tried to maintain his proficiency in French by practicing.

When Gemmy is seen speaking to two natives, he is considered to be disloyal and Jock McIvor's associates want him to leave the settlement.Jock seeks to resist mob action but as unexplained events begin to take place something has to happen to change Gemmy's circumstances.He is moved to the household of a bee keeper.Lachlan is surprised to learn that the school teacher is a visitor there, a place where two rather cultured women live.

The minister, Frazier, sees that Gemmy is caught between two worlds and that he is a figure of the future.Gemmy had been a ratcatcher's helper.He had loved the ratcatcher.Smelling a piece of wood in furniture at his new abode with the bee keeper, memory of his past is triggered.After being a ratcatcher's boy, he was at sea for two or three years until he became a castaway.Lachlan, in manhood a politician, feels that Gemmy's presence has remained with him for his whole life.

This novel is a part of the wonderful and growing literature of the British diaspora.

Remembering Gemmy
"One day in the middle of the nineteenth century, when settlement in Queensland had advanced little more than halfway up the coast, three children were playing at the edge of a paddock when they say something extraordinary." So begins David Malouf's poetic novel "Remembering Babylon," a tale based on the true historical character named Gemmy Morril. The fictionalized Gemmy Fairley is the "something extraordinary" the three children, sisters Janet and Meg McIvor, and their cousin Lachlan Beattie find and later provide shelter for at the McIvor farm home. Gemmy is twenty-nine years old; sixteen years earlier he was thrown overboard from a British ship and has since been living with the aborigines.

Upon being threatened by a stick made to appear as a gun by Lachlan, Gemmy spits out, "Do not shoot, I am a B-b-british object." How apropos those words turn out to be as the town treats Gemmy more like a carefully watched dangerous animal than the prodigal son. Malouf is a native of Australia, but his mixed ancestry (mother is of Portuguese Jewish descent, father is Lebanese Christian) has surely prompted him to explore identity. One running theme and fear is losing one's whiteness. "Poor bugger, he had got lost, and as just a bairn too. It was a duty they owed to what they were, or claimed to be, to bring him back, if it was feasible, to being a white man. But was it feasible? He had been with them, quite happily it appeared, for more than half his life: living off the land, learning their lingo and all their secrets, all the abominations they went in for. Were they actually looking at a man, a white man?"

At times Malouf's writing jumps too quickly from different vantage points such as the schoolteacher George Abbot; Jock and Janet McIvor, who protect and treat Gemmy fairly; Mr. Frazer, the minister; and other smaller side characters. But after regaining one's bearings, the reader will step into a rhythm and word choice that befits a well-crafted poem. Malouf earned his writing chops via poetry ("Bicycle and Other Poems," 1970); "Remembering Babylon" sparkles with visual imagery thanks to the author's writing foundation of poetry. Happily the ending does not fall into maudlin sentimentality or cliché. However, one perhaps would have like to read and delve into knowing Gemmy more. Nonetheless, Malouf's "Remembering Babylon" is a powerful look at what happens when one encounters the "other."

Bohdan Kot

A very strong work
A coming-of-age/awakening/search-for-identity novel that moves beyond the angst felt in the search for truth/self to interesting modes of revelation and insights into human nature. The story is more complex than many novels because the revelations are multiple-each character develops new insights and ways of knowing. Other themes developed by Malouf in this novel deal with man-nature relationships; fear of of the unknown, the alien, or the misunderstood; and cultural bias, esp. toward other ways of thinking/knowing. A fine story that is rich in ideas.

Interesting read!
The novel "Remembering Babylon" by David Malouf deals with the cultural clash between 19th century white settlers in Australia and the native Australian world view. Praised by many critics, the book won the 1996 International Impac Dublin Literary Award and was short-listed for the 1993 Booker Prize.
In this novel, David Malouf, an Australian himself, describes the story of Gemmy Fairley, who was cast ashore in northern Australia as a boy and then raised by Aborigines. Sixteen years later, he steps out of the "absolute darkness" of the outback and makes himself known to a small community of white settlers. Trying to find his former self, Gemmy has to deal with not only the cruelty and racism of the villagers but also with the demons of his own past. In the course of his stay, he changes the settlers' view on the natives as well as their view on themselves.
I read this book for English class, and I must say that it is not easy to read for a non-native speaker if you really want to understand the book. It took some time to get absorbed into the story, but once I had gotten the hang of it, it was an interesting and enjoyable read. Malouf uses a very poetic language and many metaphors that help get an impression of the native culture. He is also great at describing nature and impressions of it to the reader, making it easy to imagine everything. One thing I did not particularly like about this book is the fact that the narrator reveals information about Gemmy's past only in small bits, so the readers keeps on guessing and wondering what is going on sometimes. On the other hand, this way of giving facts about Gemmy is certainly what makes the reader keep on reading.
All in all, I can only recommend this book to anybody who is interested in getting to know other cultures and in learning more about "cultural clashes". Even though the story takes place in 19th century Australia, the message of "Remembering Babylon" is universal and still important today, maybe more than ever. ... Read more

Amazon.com
The Australian writer David Malouf, best noted for An Imaginary Life and Remembering Babylon, is a master of restraint. In Dream Stuff, he gives us a cast of lost Antipodeans. "Sally's Story" features a kind of homey prostitute to American GIs during the Vietnam War. She offers soldiers not just sex but "an illusion of domestic felicity in the form of a soft-mouthed girl and the sort of walk-up city-style living that is represented by an intercom and a prohibition against the playing of loud music after eleven o'clock." Sally does not think this arrangement "would be damaging," but, the author tells us, "she was wrong." No further commentary is granted us, nor is this woman allowed much more interiority. Malouf falls firmly into the show-don't-tell camp. In the end, what he shows us is Sally doing just what her GIs do: she seeks refuge in a strange man's domestic arrangements.

Another refugee is Colin, the novelist protagonist of the title story. Upon his mother's death, this Londoner returns to his native Brisbane. In "half a dozen fictions," he has recalled the Brisbane of his youth, "the density of tropical vegetation, timber soft to the thumb, the drumming of rain on corrugated-iron roofs." Alas, what he finds instead, is a "new addiction to metal and glass." The home he has plundered for his writing is gone, except, of course, in his writing. He is further displaced by circumstance: he lands, improbably, in jail. Malouf writes again and again of the way adult life necessarily distances us from the dream stuff of childhood. His characters ping back and forth between past and present, unable to rest. Maybe this is a theme especially haunting in Australia, with its literal watery distance from everywhere else. At any rate, Malouf's Australians demand careful reading. When we pay attention, we start to feel unsettled too. --Claire DedererBook Description
Here are nine haunting stories from the award-winning author of Remembering Babylon, in which history and geography, as well as the past and the present, combine and often collide, illuminating the landscape and revealing the character of Australia.

An eleven-year-old boy sees his father in his own elongated shadow only to realize that he will not return from the war. In a parting moment, a young woman hired to “marry” vacationing soldiers, grasps the weight of the word “woe.” When a failing farmer senselessly murders a wandering aborigine, he imperils his son but discovers in the spring of sympathy that follows the power to influence others. Wise and moving, startling and lyrical, Dream Stuff reverberates with the unpredictability of human experience, revealing people who are shaped by the mysterious rhythms of nature as well as the ghosts of their own pasts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Stories are boring
Sorry, I realize this writer and this collection has been critically acclaimed, but all I did reading it was yawn and wonder - where is the wonder!The pace is so slow, and the plots - what plots.Reads more like a narrative of one of my relatives boring lives.

I just don't understand the praise - 5 stars??????

What can I say?
This is perhaps one of the most phenomenal books I've read in the past year. Malouf's prose is intricate, flowing, and beautiful, and I found myself taking more time than usual after each story to ponder meanings and significances. Malouf is one of few writers to have completely mastered both style and content; his results are breathtaking. A must read.

the poetry of prose
David Malouf has written books that I return to and return to again for the language that is wonderful and the sense of place - Australia from its settlers' beginnings to modern time - that tells more about the uniqueness of that continent than a thousand pictures. One of the stories in this collection, Jacko's Reach is one of the most beautifully written evocations of the enduring quality of memory and wild places, full of mystery, that I have ever read. These are wonderful stories.

Great Talent With Short Stories
I have read and commented upon seven of the nine novels that David Malouf has written. His novels are not lengthy but they all share the great talent this writer has. "Dream Stuff", is a collection of nine short stories that appear together for the first time. Just as he has done many times over with his novels, he presents a series of shorter works that are uniformly very good, and some that are excellent.

There are two stories that were of great interest as the Author chose children to narrate the tale. At the age of 9 in, "Closer", a young girl is the hostess for the story, and in, "Blacksoil Country", our young male guide is but twelve. The choice of youth for narrators was interesting as the stories they shared were those of adult situations, feelings and actions. The word precocious would not accurately measure the insight these children have.

All of the stories tend toward the darker spectrums of Human Nature. Even when the tale may just be deeply sad I believe it still shows the more negative aspects of people and Family. There is one story that stands out for its absolute brutality. It is particularly savage as it is unexpected, and random in its violence. Unfortunately it reflects what we too often read of in the news.

I highly recommend the work of this Author. I have never picked up one of his works and come away with anything less than great admiration for his skill.

Poetry becomes prose
David Malouf is a brilliant writer, as those readers who have digested "Remebering Babylon", "Conversations at Curlew Creek", etc. can attest.Too often Malouf is classified as an Australian writer, a limiting category for a man who spendshalf his year in Australia ad the other half in Tuscany!But as far as the content of his works is concerned he references the immense, isolated Australia, a country very much in this century and yet still a part of the Last Frontier image.In his works he describes characters who somehow reflect that isolation, that pioneer spirit, that insular view of the world.In DREAM STUFF we are treated to hugely successful small stories that deal with man's tiny speck of space in a universe full of fear and trials.Malouf is able to completely inhabit the female narrator as in "Closer", a tale of Pentecostal dealing (or rather not dealing) with things sensual."Sally's Story" is the agar plate for a larger novel - a woman who understands that the only way she will experience life outside her cramped environment is to serve as a "hostess" to GIs on leave from Vietnam.In "Lone Pine" a couple escapes the secure tenderings of the workaday life in the city only to face nature in all its evil forces: their Idyll becomes the stage for murder by seemingly "decent folk".And on it goes.Malouf's language is lush while straight forward, his plots are deceptively simple until he leaves us wondering how to finish the dialogue he has started. Another brilliant book from one of the best writers of our time. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Amazon.com
It is only natural for our eyes to wander into the circumstances of others and either count our blessings or rail at the injustice of fate. How we deal with the fate dealt us is the subject of David Malouf's shadowy novel. Having grown up in the same household, but under different circumstances, two foster-brothers respond to fate in radically different ways and with radically different results. While one takes kismet under his horsewhip, the other dares not rebel. This haunting replay of Greek tragedy will reverberate in your mind long after the last page is turned, for as with these men, fate is our habitat.Book Description
A new work of fiction by the author of Remembering Babylon. It is 1827, and, in a remote hut high on the plains of New South Wales, two strangers spend the night in talk. One, an illiterate Irishman, and ex-convict and bushranger, is to be hanged at dawn. The other is the police officer who has been sent to supervise the hanging. As the night wears on, the two men share memories and uncover unlikely connections between their lives. 240 pp. Author tour. 20,000 print.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

David Malouf
I am not going to give you a summary of the book, but it does have very good plot and detailed characters.The book describes characters through flashbacks on their past and what they've had to deal with in the past.I usual like a book with a little more actual conversations and I did find it confusing at time when flashbacks became reality again.I did the author did a good job showing the emotions of each character, you could easily which character was the angry one, the friendly one, and so on and so forth.Overall it wasn't my favorite book just because the dialogue was weak but it is a good read.

A night of memories
Michael Adair is far from his native Ireland. In the scrub of New South Wales, he's been assigned the supervising of the execution of a bushranger. With no priest present, Adair undertakes the task of providing company, if not consolation, for the doomed raider. Carney, an Irishman like Adair, was a member of a gang led by a renowned leader, Dolan. Dolan, famous for his physical stature and cunning, is of particular interest to Adair. The last survivor of the mob, Carney seeks some level of absolution for his sins, which appear minimal. Frontier justice is always grim and Carney expects no favours from his watcher.

As the night progresses, Adair's mind drifts back to his childhood in Ireland. An orphan taken in by a comfortable, if troubled, family, he reflects on his foster parents' son. From early days when Adair was caregiver to Fergus to later, more competitive times, the relationship of the two boys was close. It became strained only as they achieved maturity and Virgilia, a neighbour, becomes a tutor to the pair. Carney, it appears, may be a link to that distant past. A link less remote and vague than the circumstances of the lonely night suggest. Reminiscing may lead to connections both men may not welcome, yet each reaches tentatively for the other regardless of the outcome. The dynamics of this tale are intense and compelling.

In Australia, there's a long-standing tradition of the "bush ballad" - a mix of fable, poetry and music. The ballads reflect the stark, unforgiving land and the lives of the people coping with it. The verses are wistful with longing for better times and places, yet reflect the "battler's" striving to overcome adversity. Malouf's prose reflects that tradition in both style and content. He's parsimonious with words, yet precise and vividly descriptive. He's presented us with a story of profound depth and wide-reaching scope, yet managed it within an astonishing few pages. No words are wasted, but each conveys the fullest meaning within the story. Malouf is a masterful writer, and this book will long stand as a sterling example of his abilities. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Fade To Gray
David Malouf is not only a novelist, but a published poet as well. His work, "The Conversations At Curlow Creek", contain passages that could stand alone as solitary poems with little change to their form. This is only the third work of his I have read, so even if combined with the fourth I am reading, I still feel this Author's range is remarkable. Australia is not a place where the word confine would seem to be appropriate, however with this story Mr. Malouf creates a very intimate setting that even when expanded, rarely grows larger.

As he has done before he brings people from Scotland, or Ireland and tells his story in Australia. When I said he expands the setting without literally enlarging it as well, I meant that his players might roam their memories and share those of others, while remaining all but immobile during the tale. Two men from Ireland share an evening. One represents the authority of law in its most final form, the other a man whose outlaw life should hold values in complete opposition to his jailer. An then there is a third man, also from Ireland, raised as a brother to the lawman, and the possible leader of the group the prisoner is the only surviving member of.

The night can be a strange time for thoughts and memories, and when one of the men is supposed to be hung at dawn, every minute is arguably critical. The passage of time seems to obsess the jailer more. When asked the time he wonders if he should just say the half hour, or the actual 28 minutes past. He contemplates the value these 2 additional minutes would mean to the condemned. He uses time to gain information about this man's leader, probing to see if the man is his foster brother last seen when 16 years of age. The jailer sensitive to the man's diminishing time is desperate for the knowledge, but becomes increasingly respectful of the convict.

The travels outside the room they share often read as a recollection, until the waking of the dreamer disturbs the memory. It's a more subtle form of recall than just turning the page and finding you are jumping back and forth between dates. As the night passes the ides of forgiveness, redemption, and morality are discussed with the jailor playing the reluctant philosopher/priest. Mr. Malouf is very clever in taking issues that seem so black and white, and making them gray. He examines the two paths in life these men have followed, and the possible life of the third man. All three are very different, but two may have decided to live outside the confines of society's laws, while the third became a custodian of the same society's structure.

The book comes to an ending that I doubt many will find expected, and some may argue is ambiguous. Mr. Malouf leaves a great deal of room for his readers to either find the thread he leaves, or to allow space to be filled by the reader. His writing is unique and compelling, and will either hold great appeal, or certain frustration for readers.

A moral masterpiece
This is one of my all time valued books. A splended writer, Malouf uses language as a poet, brings his two main characters to vivid life, makes the reader care about both of them...the convict and the soldier (possibly hisexecutioner). What particularly moved me and sets this book above most ishow skillfully Malouf raises the question of morality (without moralizing)relative to the judgement of others...Who is not guilty? Or if guilty, whatabout the compassion of another.These are to me primary questions in aworldwhere finger-pointing is so prevalent.Malouf is a man whose breadthand depth of insight deserve much attention and applause.

Thought-provoking
The suspense of the novel is provided by the reader's wondering if Adairwill hang an illiterate Irish convict at dawn or if he will yield tocompassion after talking and reminiscing with the man through the night. The convict relates a story about a time that he was given a job toimpersonate someone under very mysterious circumstances which turned out tobe the only instance in the man's life that he was ever treated with anykind of tenderness.This story is marvelously told and does arouse thereader's sympathy. Soldier and convict are united by their Irishbackgrounds and the fact that they were both orphans whose fortunes,however, were widely divergent. The reader comes to wonder which positionis more difficult: the convict's necessity of facing death at dawn or thesoldier's duty to be the executioner.The author uses this situation as afocus for a meditation on mortality that is philosophical and sometimesmysterious. This would be a good selection for a book group as multipleinterpretations of the meaning of the book are certainly possible. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on September 22, 2000. The length of the article is 500 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: DAVID MALOUF CHRONOLOGY.(Australian author)(Brief Article)
Author: David Draper Clark
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2000
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 74Issue: 4Page: 706

Article Type: Brief Article

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Village Voice
A rare novel . . . rich in descriptive detail . . . and thoroughly persuasive in its portrayal of a world and an era. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A thesaurus is required
The thesaurus is not needed to read this book, but to describe Malouf's work.There is certainly no single term that can encompass his superb writing abilities."Opulent" might cover his descriptive powers, but fails to address the strength of Malouf's chronicle of Frank Harland."Gripping" isn't appropriate to a life so realistically portrayed - with its tumultuous events mixed with the mundane.Artist Frank Harland is anything but mundane, however.Raised in a rural, hilly environment, Harland is buffeted by lasting poverty, overborne by deep loyalties to father and brothers, never losing sight of the meaning of "place."That place is the one-room house of his birth.No matter how far he strays from that locale, it haunts his life and his paintings.In the end, he confines himself to the "Half Acre" in solitary exile.What the thesaurus fails to convey for the reviewer, Malouf's own words will keep you embedded in this real life story.

This early book presages why many awards are granted Malouf for his writing.He was the first winner of the IMPAC award, the richest in publishing.The story of Frank Harland captures the reader from the first page.His father, an indolent dairy farmer, imparted a sense of story in Frank from his earliest days.He applies his learning to drawing instead of text, giving a fresh image of his home and its people throughout his life.Affected by the powers experienced in the hill country, the various intensities of light and shadow, the wonder-generating storms that beset the hills, the flora and fauna encountered, he struggles to impart his feelings to his art.Using any available medium, Frank paints on wood, cardboard panels, paper or whatever is at hand.The work gains wide circulation, almost unknown to Frank.Success and fame are not his aim, however, but getting through life remains the dominant theme throughout this work.In the background, he remains beset by "place," which is translated into spending his earnings on enlarging his father's land holdings.

Malouf's great strength is in characterization.Every person in this story is vividly depicted, Frank, father Clem, Tam the stepbrother and Phil the lawyer.Would you like these people? It's doubtful.Frank, caught up in his art, is slovenly, his various residences a chaos, his appearance ragged. Phil is hesitant, charmless and limited in scope.Little wonder he remains unmarried throughout his life.There is little to attract in any of these people.Still, Malouf manages to portray them sympathetically.His prose keeps you attentive, following their fates, no matter how distasteful their personalities might seem.It is Malouf's honed skills that keeps this book timeless.

A Family Tree
Generational Family Trees are often found at the beginning of Biographies. Mr. Malouf's, "Harland's Half Acre", is a novel so the Families are fictitious, however the complexity of the relationships are very real, so a pen a paper may help keep all in order. The Author is not a writer of clichés, and the people and how they relate are in no way contrived. There is some unusual movement of players, and they sometimes concur with the death of another key character, it may just have been me, however there seemed much to follow.

This is the fifth work of the Authors that I have read, so I have by no means even reached the halfway mark in his work. Of the works I have read this is my favorite. This book is neither as complex as, "An Imaginary Life", nor as seemingly straightforward as, "The Conversations At Curlow Creek".The works I have read that were about the settlement of Australia were placed at the beginning of the earlier settlers history while this work shows the results and failures of the descendents of those pioneers.

The artist in the book reminded me of another Author's portrayal of a painter in. "The Moon And Sixpence", by W. Somerset Maugham. The artist's personalities are very different, and the issues they struggle with differ as well. I make the reference as it may cause an association to the better-known work. Mr. Malouf's work is every bit as good a read.

All of the attributes about the Author's work I have mentioned before I will try not to repeat, however in this work the manner with which he had his characters experience death was interesting to me. His writing of death and its dismantling of life is very well done, however the way he chose to deal with the actual instant of death was new as a reader for me. It occurs more than once, so I believe the note is something the Author wanted to make a point of. Death is hardly a new area, but as he has done in his previous books, he writes about aspects of what you believe you are familiar with and he brings a fresh perspective. His work is not derivative, it is unique as he takes a detail, a moment in time, and causes it to be a noteworthy event.

A wonderful writer, I look forward to the balance of his work.

Malouf's Struggling Artist.
David Malouf's Harland's Half Acre is by every standard a great book. Malouf has elected to deal the life of Frank Harland, a fictional Australian painter based loosely on real-life painter and recluse IanFairweather. Thematically, Malouf's book is comparable to Patrick White'sThe Vivisector, although Malouf's book certainly is a less demanding andfar more beautiful read.As usual, Malouf's almost liquid prose is beyondreproach, and the central characters are more substantialthan in previousworks.Harland's Half Acre has not received as much acclaim as othernovels by David Malouf, which is a great pity. The novel is not as grandlyimagined as Malouf's masterpiece An Imaginary Life, yet it follows in thefootsteps of Johnno, 12 Edmondstone St. and The Great World by painting anintensely personal picture of Australian history/memory. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on September 22, 2000. The length of the article is 6807 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Bread of Time to Come: BODY AND LANDSCAPE IN DAVID MALOUF'S FICTION.
Author: Andrew Taylor
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2000
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 74Issue: 4Page: 715

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on September 22, 2000. The length of the article is 4168 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: HARLAND'S HALF ACRE A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG AUSTRALIAN.(interpretation of David Malouf's "Harland's Half Acre")(Critical Essay)
Author: Robert Ross
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2000
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 74Issue: 4Page: 733

Article Type: Critical Essay

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on September 22, 2000. The length of the article is 6444 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Dreaming Wholeness: DAVID MALOUF'S NEW STORIES.
Author: John Scheckter
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2000
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 74Issue: 4Page: 740

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on September 22, 2000. The length of the article is 7048 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Reimagining the Remembered: DAVID MALOUF AND THE MORAL IMPLICATIONS OF MYTH.(Critical Essay)
Author: Carolyn Bliss
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2000
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 74Issue: 4Page: 724

Article Type: Critical Essay

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Book Description

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on September 22, 2000. The length of the article is 5187 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: What Dreams may Come: DAVID MALOUF'S DREAM STUFF.
Author: Peter Pierce
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2000
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 74Issue: 4Page: 750

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Australian Studies, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2007. The length of the article is 7050 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Remembering inheritance: David Malouf and the literary cultivation of nation.(Essay)
Author: Brigid Rooney
Publication: Journal of Australian Studies (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 90Page: 65(14)

Article Type: Essay

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